The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “What do you mean?” I begged, standing up from my couch. “Three times I have been there to that other world and back, and yet I know but vaguely the why and wherefore of it.”

  “You shall know, my son,” soothed Shorro-Kal. “Have patience for a while yet. First of all, Prince Dahrin, you must tell me all that you remember of that other world, and all you can of that other being whom you feel to be yourself. Then, and then only, can I make clear to you the entire story of this, my greatest feat in the ancient profession of magic.”

  I puzzled in thought for a moment, and then began:

  “In that other life I was—or am—named George Borland. He is a youth of perhaps my age, but far punier in body and meeker of heart. He lives—or I live there—in a great city of stupendous structures which tower ten times the height of Castle Oppor.”

  I paused, and then went on, giving a picture of the world of George Borland, drawing from a well of memory that seemed my own, and yet not my own. Finally Shorro-Kal, who listened attentively, interrupted and asked a few leading questions that brought out in broad detail the life of George Borland. It came at last to the mention of the sapphire and how through its inexplicable influence I had transported myself from that world to Jorentia. At this point the old priest’s face became a picture of great interest; he hung on my words as though they were the distilled essence of eternal wisdom.

  Then I had told all I could, and fell silent, staring at the fervent concentration displayed on my companion’s bearded visage.

  SHORRO-KAL remained in this state for long minutes, till I thought he had perhaps cast a spell about himself and sent his spirit to some forgotten outland. I squirmed fretfully, for I had never been the kind to spend time in idle waiting, and was about to touch his arm when his eyes came suddenly to life.

  And he spoke: “You say this gem which had seemed to enmesh you in dreams was blue in color?”

  I nodded. “A beautiful iridescent blue, which exhibits every tone and shade of that color, in various kinds of light.” Shorro-Kal stroked his beard thoughtfully: “And when the spell of the blue-stone was upon you, you seemed to drift in strata of blueness, shade after shade, till of a sudden you were here in Jorentia?”

  I nodded again.

  “Picture the scene which you saw from the ramparts of Castle Oppor with Alvena,” said the aged man then, with a tense note in his voice. “Was there anything in that color to—remind you of the stone?”

  I started in surprize. “Yes! Yes! It strikes me now at your mention of it. Those obscuring mists which roll over Jorentia and hide the light of the blessed sun, and form also a wall that bisects our kingdom, have the nature and quality of the blue-stone’s radiance! I would swear it!”

  At this Shorro-Kal heaved a long sigh and turned his eyes heavenward as though thanking Tordok for some great favor. Then he trembled like a leaf and would have fallen if I had not sprung to his aid. I carried him to the couch, alarmed at the sudden pallor that overspread his withered cheeks. But he pushed me away as I started to rub his wrists, and his color returned.

  “It is nothing, Prince Dahrin. My old bones are but feeling their age.”

  I could not know, but I felt it was more than just that.

  Then Shorro-Kal turned his oddly luminous eyes on me. “Prince Dahrin—or George Borland, as you are also known—you shall now hear as much as it is possible for you to understand of the mysterious spell which sent your spirit—your soul-mind—to another world on a strange quest.”

  He folded his robe carefully, and I waited with caught breath, for the mystery of it had me deeply interested.

  “Know then,” began Shorro-Kal, “that when I perceived the Miskovites had broken our power with a great and evil magic, and when I saw how impossible it was for even such a great fighter and leader as yourself to drive them out of our fair land, I decided that only in one way could the scourge be lifted—magic must be fought with magic!

  “Thereupon I girded my supernatural powers and exorcised from nadirs of the universe certain benign spirits, and communed with them. Through their kindly aid, I was shown a way to combat the hideous sorcery of the Miskovites, for these spirits hated those leagued with our enemy. Yet it was not to be easy.

  “The black magic of the Miskovites is very powerful. The sorcery I had at my command was hardly able to cope with theirs. But the one way was there for my use, providing I was willing to risk not only my own life and soul, but the soul of another—yourself! For only a strong-spirited man, good and pure in thought and deed, would suffice for ray purpose, and in all the land of Jorentia, none could be more fit for the part than yourself. I risked your soul to a horrible fate, in the event of failure, my son, because I placed the welfare and future well-being of Jorentia even above you—or myself.” He paused; then: “We have met with success, my son, for which thank Tordok. But I greatly fear that the price will be paid after all——”

  I glanced up, startled.

  “You are safe,” he pursued, “but myself, and one other—it rests between us, or perhaps jointly upon us.”

  I ATTEMPTED to elicit further information on the matter, but Shorro-Kal shook his head:

  “Let that be; it concerns directly neither you nor Jorentia. To continue—I having made my plans, and acquainted you with them, you readily agreed, thinking, perhaps, that the spell I was to weave would make possible your carrying on a successful war against the Miskovites. It was just three years ago that the Princess Alvena bade you a tearful, but brave, good-bye—she being fully in accord with my scheme—and I took you from her and conducted you down here to my chambers.”

  I nodded eagerly, remembering vividly that last hour of life—that tender caress from Alvena, the beautiful Alvena whom I loved dearer than life, and who less than a month before that had promised to become my bride upon my safe return.

  “For three days and nights I labored,” went on the old priest. “I called upon my most terrific powers of magic, and sent you into a deep trance. Then, the enchantment completed, I transported your stiffened body to the crypts of the executioners, knowing it would there be unmolested by enemy or friend alike, as none dares defy the ghosts that wander there.

  “There lay your body, Prince Dahrin, but your spirit—ah, it wandered afar indeed! Where—I myself cannot know that. But I had bidden it search—if need be to the ends of the universe—for the Secret of Deliverance for Jorentia. Under the compelling command of my sorcery, your consciousness—your soul in very fact—plunged into the abysses of unnumbered worlds, searching, ever searching. And there lay the great danger: that your soul, never reaching its goal, would wander for ever—and never return to bring to life your sleeping body once again!”

  I shuddered, and at the same time felt glad that I had not known those things before I had been sent on the ghostly mission.

  “But your soul was strong, my son, strong and relentless in its search, and it finally came upon its goal. That goal was in the world in which you lived as George Borland. Thereupon, through what processes I cannot make clear to you, your soul fastened itself in proximity to the goal which it had found—and that was the first of George Borland’s strange ‘dreams’. Somehow—even to myself it is not fully clear—your soul identified itself with that of George Borland’s, and as one with him, you dwelt in that land for a short space of time.”

  “But where is that land?” I queried as the old priest paused. “Surely it must lie in some remote corner of this world. Yet it cannot be, for from what I know through my identity with George Borland, they knew no such land as this—Jorentia.”

  “Try not to fathom that, my son,” answered Shorro-Kal solemnly. “It is not of this world, nor of any world your mind can conceive. Despite your rapport with George Borland, your respective material worlds are separated by impassable gulfs of dimensions—inconceivable distances—impenetrable veils of time!”

  I shrugged the problem away willingly enough, and waited for the magician to go on.

  “T
hrough the medium of what to George Borland was dream-stuff, your soul, still bent on its mission, came back to Jorentia, carrying with it the soul of that other being, for you two had become inextricably entwined in identity.

  “Imagine my great joy—it could have been no less than the joy of your beloved Princess when she heard—as I paid my daily visit to the crypt in which your body lay, to find it lying outside by the road. I knew immediately your spirit had returned, and I stayed there constantly, after bringing you once again inside, hoping and praying that nothing had gone amiss.

  “Of course, we now know all has gone well. You are safely returned, and with you the Great Secret of Deliverance for which I sent you to search the universes.”

  “What then is the Great Secret?” I asked, trembling.

  “This,” and his voice became grave—portentous. “The master magicians of Miskovia had locked the evil blue mist over Jorentia, and split it in twain, and they had placed the key to its unlocking in that other world, fully content that it was out of my reach, for well they knew that I was also a powerful sorcerer. Any puny and inadequate spell I would have dissolved in a trice. Ah, it was a master move! And well-nigh it proved beyond my reach!”

  For a moment Shorro-Kal expanded in a sudden mood of exultance, and I said nothing, for he fully deserved an instant of self-elation and triumph. But the aged priest was not the one to lose himself in such vain thoughts for long. He went on:

  “The key”—now his voice fell to a whisper, and he glanced about as though fearing eavesdroppers—“the key to the evil curse of the blue fog which clouds Jorentia is nothing more than that sapphire which George Borland possesses!”

  I sat stunned. Then I heard Shorro-Kal’s voice again, fraught with excitement. “You must make one more journey back to that alien world where you live as George Borland. One more and it will be the last, for with the smashing of the sapphire, the evil spell of blueness will dissolve from our skies! And you and George Borland will separate, never to meet again!”

  I REMEMBER little more, beyond the fact that Shorro-Kal led me to the chambers of the Princess, and left us alone for a while so that we might caress each other and rejoice together over the coming deliverance of our loved land. Then I was back with Shorro-Kal in his gloomy caverns, and he smiled encouragingly upon me as he waved the wand before my face. There was a swirling of indigo mist, hazes of ethereal ultra-marine, and then——

  I was staring at the sapphire in my hand—I, George Borland.

  I have the sapphire before me now as I write. It glints oddly in the lamplight: it seems to twinkle with weighty secrets. Is it just a sapphire, a mineral with some tinsel value, as anybody I’d ask would hasten to assure me without question? Is it merely a colored bit of stone which has hypnotized me into a species of dream? Is it nothing but a speck from Nature’s furnaces, about which and under the influence of which, I have deluded myself into believing I have traversed strange dimensions to an utterly alien, yet incredibly earth-like, world?

  Or is it more than that?

  [End of diary excerpts.—EANDO.]

  * * * * * * *

  INSIDE the sealed envelope containing the above writing was a smaller envelope, which I did not notice till I had read the manuscript. Then my eye fell on the object and I carefully sliced it open with my pen-knife. Tipping it to see what could be inside, I dropped it suddenly with an involuntary cry.

  With the sound of dried peas in a gourd, a stream of roughly ground bits of blue stone scattered over the table top!

  SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT

  Beginning a Powerful Two-Part Story

  DORA HARTWELL knew, with a sudden pang, that this man was unknown to her. He looked the same, but in his eyes there was a mystery that was unsolvable. His name was Vincent A. Renolf, but there was no name for the new spirit that showed itself in his face. The lips had became thinner, more firm. Lines of concentration were etching deeper each moment in his young brow. An impersonal quality had crept into his previously frank visage. The girl sobbed, turning to the still figure of her father on the couch.

  “He is dead!” she cried suddenly. “And you have killed him!”

  The young, well-built man, whom she thus addressed, was sitting upon the cold porcelain slab, his arms supporting his body from falling backward. He had arisen to that position from one of reclining, twenty minutes before. Since then he had not moved. Had merely stared without expression around the walls of Dr. Hartwell’s well-equipped general laboratory. And all the while a deep wisdom had grown in his young face.

  Now he turned his eyes—uncannily bright eyes—to the girl sobbing brokenly at the side of her father’s corpse. “He died—from the shock of success?” His voice, too, had changed, had become deeper, more resonant.

  The girl nodded, choking back her sobs. “Yes, from that. Twenty minutes ago you revived from the anaesthesia and suddenly sat up. Father cried in joy, then turned white. It was his poor weak heart. He staggered to this couch and now he’s—— Oh, you have killed him!”

  The young man frowned at the fresh torrent of tears. Then he turned his eyes away from the girl, and seemed to lose himself in a trance. From both sides of his head, at a spot just above the ear, a thin silver wire came from a tiny metal box fastened to a leather band that encircled his skull. The two wires, curled to allow him movement, ended in a panel of switches and dials against the nearer wall. To what the panel connected was Dr. Hartwell’s great life work.

  Eccentric and wealthy, Dr. Joshua Hartwell, after the death of his wife twenty years before, had retired himself in a superbly equipped laboratory. Had retired from the world, but not from his labors. It had been his lifelong ambition to achieve one thing. He had succeeded.

  As a result of his success, Vincent A. Renolf—his assistant for five years—was undergoing a metamorphosis that brought unwonted knowledge to his mind of but five and twenty summers. As a second result of his success—unforeseen, of course—he himself had died in an ecstasy of triumph. The third and final result of his success—as it unfolded itself in the months that followed—was strange indeed.

  His daughter Dora, at his side for all of her twenty years of life, loved him dearly, morose and testy though he had been in his ceaseless experimentation. She had been his only contact with the outside world, had managed the house and two servants, and had bought his materials for the workshop. Yet something had warned her that when the result of her father’s decades of furious experimentation turned to success, he would die. Consequently, she cried now not because he had died, but solely because of her love for him.

  BUT she was not the kind to mourn long and self-pityingly. Her gusts of tears died away in a few minutes, and she relegated her sorrow into her heart. Time would soften it. Drying her eyes, she looked again at the young assistant on the porcelain table. That far-away look in his face hurt her, too, for she had come to love him in those five years he had been with them.

  Tall and lithely built, he was every inch a man. With regular features—straight nose, high forehead, curly, brown hair—he could have made it a business to move feminine hearts. Could have been, in short, an adored playboy. But he had escaped that fate despite such incentives. Had instead developed a keen and responsive brain. Orphaned early in life, Dr. Hartwell’s money had sent him through a university.

  His father had been Hartwell’s one true friend. With a strong sense of gratitude, the grown-up and well-schooled Vincent had insisted on repaying his debt. Hartwell, on sudden impulse, had refused money, and had instead asked for Renolf’s assistance in the laboratory. He had proved a worthy assistant.

  Dora was sorry now she had named him the cause of her father’s death. After all, he was not to blame. Despite her misgivings, her father had gone through with the great experiment. Renolf had offered himself as the subject because of his great respect and faith in the old scientist. Now it was done. The man she loved sat there, unmoved by death, by tears, by stormy accusations. He was not Vincent any more. He was—
more.

  And the man who had been Renolf and was now something more, finally awoke from the trance that had held him spellbound. He had seemed to listen to silent voices, to look upon unseen things. A world had opened before his eyes. Incredible lore had flooded into his receptive mind. And his face, a barometer of such inner revelations, became a picture of power.

  Dora felt a great fear steal upon her—a fear of the unknown. Much as she knew her father’s work, she had not grasped fully what its culmination would mean. This silent, brooding man was its culmination—and she was frightened. With a sudden cry she ran to the panel whose pilot lights glowed steadily, and ripped out the wires that connected to the young assistant’s headband. Then she turned, wide-eyed and defiant.

  Renolf had leaped from the table at her move, but too late to prevent the act. His look of sudden wrath turned to bewilderment. He seemed to sag within himself. Watching, Dora saw his face lose that cosmic wisdom and become again the face she knew. It was the old Vincent again, as though he had materialized out of a distorted dream.

  Dora throw herself in his arms with a sob of joy. “Vince! Dearest beloved! I didn’t know you with those wires on. You were a different person!”

  The young man held her close, tenderness on his face. “I was a different person, Dora. A composite character in which my own personal reaction was completely submerged. I knew you, darling girl, but as from a distance. And I knew myself—only as a part of my new being!”

  Dora took his hand. “Let us leave this place. It is my father’s death chamber. And it makes me shudder to think of that—other being who was in here a moment ago!”

  But the young assistant did not move, pulled her gently back. His face became grave. “Dora! We cannot leave! That is, I must not. I must reconnect those wires, and——”